The present disclosure generally relates to location based services and, in particular, to identifying geographical areas.
Information about geographical areas may be useful in many contexts (e.g., routing services, identification of points of interest, or other location based services). New geographical areas may form over time, change overtime, and, in some cases, cease to exist. Countries may form or split apart and cities may be incorporated or become abandoned. More informal geographical areas (e.g., neighborhoods, boroughs, parishes, business or shopping districts, etc.) may sometimes form within a larger town, city, state or region. These areas may be formed around a point of interest (POI) such as a landmark, commercial development (e.g., a shopping area, stadium, or plaza), neighborhood, or community. The boundaries of these geographical areas may also change over time. To illustrate, some of these informal geographical areas may include the neighborhoods of New York City, N.Y. such as SoHo, Time Square, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, East Village, Chelsea, Midtown, and the Upper West Side.
Identifying new and existing geographical areas and determining their boundaries may be useful for a variety of applications such as, for example, searching for locations of businesses or homes, viewing maps of a location, getting directions from one location to another, gathering real estate information, etc.